No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam

Though it is the fastest growing religion in the world, Islam remains shrouded by ignorance and fear. What is the essence of this ancient faith? Is it a religion of peace or war? How does Allah differ from the God of Jews and Christians? Can an Islamic state be founded on democratic values such as pluralism and human rights? A writer and scholar of comparative religions, Reza Aslan has earned international acclaim for the passion and clarity he has brought to these questions.

Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

From the internationally bestselling author of No god but God comes a fascinating, provocative, and meticulously researched biography that challenges long-held assumptions about the man we know as Jesus of Nazareth. Sifting through centuries of mythmaking, Reza Aslan sheds new light on one of history's most influential and enigmatic characters by examining Jesus through the lens of the tumultuous era in which he lived: first-century Palestine, an age awash in apocalyptic fervor.

They Can't Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era in America's Racial Justice Movement

Conducting hundreds of interviews during the course of over one year reporting on the ground, Washington Post writer Wesley Lowery traveled from Ferguson, Missouri, to Cleveland, Ohio; Charleston, South Carolina; and Baltimore, Maryland; and then back to Ferguson to uncover life inside the most heavily policed, if otherwise neglected, corners of America today.

How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee

In a book that took eight years to research and write, leading Bible scholar Bart D. Ehrman explores how an apocalyptic prophet from the backwaters of rural Galilee crucified for crimes against the state came to be thought of as equal with the one God Almighty Creator of all things. Ehrman sketches Jesus's transformation from a human prophet to the Son of God exalted to divine status at his resurrection. Only when some of Jesus's followers had visions of him after his death - alive again - did anyone come to think that he, the prophet from Galilee, had become God.

Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations

In his most ambitious work to date, Thomas L. Friedman shows that we have entered an age of dizzying acceleration - and explains how to live in it. Due to an exponential increase in computing power, climbers atop Mount Everest enjoy excellent cell phone service, and self-driving cars are taking to the roads. A parallel explosion of economic interdependency has created new riches as well as spiraling debt burdens.

Western Muslims and the Future of Islam

Grounded in scholarship and bold in its aims, Western Muslims and the Future of Islam offers a striking vision of a new Muslim Identity, one which rejects once and for all the idea that Islam must be defined in opposition to the West.

The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

It was on the Silk Roads that East and West first encountered each other through trade and conquest, leading to the spread of ideas, cultures, and religions, and it was the appetites for foreign goods that drove economies and the growth of nations. From the first cities in Mesopotamia to the emergence of Greece and Rome to the depredations by the Mongols, the transmission of the Black Death, the struggles of the Great Game, and the fall of Communism - the fate of the West has always been inextricably linked to the East.

White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America

In White Trash, Nancy Isenberg upends assumptions about America's supposedly class-free society. Poor whites were central to the rise of the Republican Party in the early 19th century, and the Civil War itself was fought over class issues nearly as much as it was fought over slavery. Reconstruction pitted poor white trash against newly freed slaves, which factored in the rise of eugenics. These poor were at the heart of New Deal reforms and LBJ's Great Society; they haunt us in reality TV shows like Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and Duck Dynasty.

Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time

From the best-selling author of Islam: A Short History comes an important addition to the Eminent Lives book series. A former Roman Catholic nun and winner of a Muslim Public Affairs Council Media Award, Karen Armstrong shows how Muhammad's life can teach us a great deal about our world. More is known about Muhammad than any other major religion founder, yet he remains mysterious.

The Post-American World 2.0

Here is the New York Times and international best seller, revised and expanded with a new afterword. This is the essential update of Fareed Zakaria's analysis about America and its shifting position in world affairs. In this new edition, Zakaria makes sense of the rapidly changing global landscape. With his customary lucidity, insight, and imagination, he draws on lessons from the two great power shifts of the past 500 years - the rise of the Western world and the rise of the United States - to tell us what we can expect from the third shift, the rise of the rest.

The Iran Wars: Spy Games, Bank Battles, and the Secret Deals That Reshaped the Middle East

This is a book rife with revelations, from the secret communications between the Obama administration and the Iranian government to dispatches from the front lines of the new field of financial warfare. For listeners of Steve Coll's Ghost Wars and Lawrence Wright's The Looming Tower, The Iran Wars exposes the hidden history of a conflict most Americans don't even realize is being fought but whose outcome could have far-reaching geopolitical implications.

Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World through Islamic Eyes

Until about 1800, the West and the Islamic realm were like two adjacent, parallel universes, each assuming itself to be the center of the world while ignoring the other. As Europeans colonized the globe, the two world histories intersected and the Western narrative drove the other one under. The West hardly noticed, but the Islamic world found the encounter profoundly disrupting.

ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror

Initially dismissed by US President Barack Obama, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has shocked the world by conquering massive territories in both countries and promising to create a vast new Muslim caliphate that observes the strict dictates of Sharia law. In ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror, American journalist Michael Weiss and Syrian analyst Hassan Hassan explain how these violent extremists evolved from a nearly defeated Iraqi insurgent group into a jihadi army of international volunteers who have conquered territory equal to the size of Great Britain.

Dear White America: Letter to a New Minority

White Americans have long been comfortable in the assumption that they are the cultural norm. Now that notion is being challenged, as white people wrestle with what it means to be part of a fast-changing, truly multicultural nation. Facing chronic economic insecurity, a popular culture that reflects the nation's diverse cultural reality, and a future in which they will no longer constitute the majority of the population, and with a black president in the White House, whites are growing anxious.

Who Rules the World?

In an incisive, thorough analysis of the current international situation, Noam Chomsky argues that the United States, through its military-first policies and its unstinting devotion to maintaining a world-spanning empire, is both risking catastrophe and wrecking the global commons.

Jen says:"Makes you realize those who scream conspiracy are closer to the truth than we would hope!"

Between the World and Me

"This is your country, this is your world, this is your body, and you must find some way to live within the all of it." In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation's history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of "race", a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men.

Islam and the Future of Tolerance: A Dialogue

In this short book, Sam Harris and Maajid Nawaz invite you to join an urgently needed conversation: Is Islam a religion of peace or war? Is it amenable to reform? Why do so many Muslims seem drawn to extremism? What do words like Islamism, jihadism, and fundamentalism mean in today's world? Remarkable for the breadth and depth of its analysis, this dialogue between a famous atheist and a former radical is all the more startling for its decorum. Harris and Nawaz have produced something genuinely new: they engage one of the most polarizing issues of our time - fearlessly and fully - and actually make progress.

Andre Wallace Simonsen says:"Must read for an honest debate on the topics"

The Kingdom: Arabia & The House of Sa'ud

The Kingdom is the story of a country - a country of astonishing contrasts, where routine computer printouts open with the words “In the name of God,” where men who grew up in goat-hair tents now dominate the money markets of the world, and where murderers and adulterers are publicly executed in the street. By its own reckoning, this country is just entering the 15th century. The Kingdom is also the story of a family - a family that has fought its way from poverty and obscurity into wealth and power.

The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future

Profiled on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, Iranian-born scholar Vali Nasr has become one of America's leading commentators on current events in the Middle East, admired and welcomed by both media and government for his "concise and coherent" analysis (Wall Street Journal). In this "smart, clear and timely" book (Washington Post), Nasr brilliantly dissects the political and theological antagonisms within Islam. He provides a unique and objective understanding of the 1,400-year bitter struggle between Shias and Sunnis, and sheds crucial light on its modern-day consequences—from the nuclear posturing of Iran's President Ahmadinejad to the recent U.S.-enabled shift toward Shia power in Iraq and Hezbollah's continued dominance in Lebanon.

Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS

Pulitzer Prize, General nonfiction, 2016. When Jordan granted amnesty to a group of political prisoners in 1999, it little realized that among them was Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a terrorist mastermind and soon the architect of an Islamist movement bent on dominating the Middle East. In Black Flags, an unprecedented account of the rise of ISIS, Joby Warrick shows how the zeal of this one man and the strategic mistakes of Presidents Bush and Obama led to the banner of ISIS being raised over huge swaths of Syria and Iraq.

Why the Right Went Wrong: Conservatism from Goldwater to the Tea Party and Beyond

Why the Right Went Wrong offers a historical view of the right since the 1960s. Its core contention is that American conservatism and the Republican Party took a wrong turn when they adopted Barry Goldwater's worldview during and after the 1964 campaign. Since 1968, no conservative administration could live up to the rhetoric rooted in the Goldwater movement that began to reshape American politics 50 years ago.

Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right

Why is America living in an age of profound economic inequality? Why, despite the desperate need to address climate change, have even modest environmental efforts been defeated again and again? Why have protections for employees been decimated? Why do hedge-fund billionaires pay a far lower tax rate than middle-class workers? The conventional answer is that a popular uprising against "big government" led to the rise of a broad-based conservative movement.

The American Civil War

Between 1861 and 1865, the clash of the greatest armies the Western hemisphere had ever seen turned small towns, little-known streams, and obscure meadows in the American countryside into names we will always remember. In those great battles, those streams ran red with blood-and the United States was truly born.

The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable to Read It

Trained as an evangelical Bible scholar, Peter Enns loved the Scriptures and shared his devotion by teaching at Westminster Theological Seminary. But the further he studied the Bible, the more he found himself confronted by questions that could neither be answered within the rigid framework of his religious instruction nor be accepted among the conservative evangelical community.

Publisher's Summary

A cosmic war is a religious war. It is a battle not between armies or nations, but between the forces of good and evil, a war in which God is believed to be directly engaged on behalf of one side against the other.

The hijackers who attacked the United States on September 11, 2001, thought they were fighting a cosmic war. According to award-winning writer and scholar of religions Reza Aslan, by infusing the United States War on Terror with the same kind of religiously polarizing rhetoric and Manichean worldview, it is also fighting a cosmic war, a war that can't be won.

How to Win a Cosmic Waris both an in-depth study of the ideology fueling al-Qaida, the Taliban, and like-minded militants throughout the Muslim world, and an exploration of religious violence in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Surveying the global scene from Israel to Iraq and from New York to the Netherlands, Aslan argues that religion is a stronger force today than it has been in a century. At a time when religion and politics are increasingly sharing the same vocabulary and functioning in the same sphere, Aslan writes that we must strip the conflicts of our world, in particular, the War on Terror, of their religious connotations and address the earthly grievances that always lie behind the cosmic impulse.

What the Critics Say

"In this provocative and engaging book, Reza Aslan shows why he is one of America's leading analysts of the confusing and frightening forces that confront us. It is Aslan's great gift to see things clearly, and to say them clearly, and in this important new work he offers us a way forward. He is prescriptive and passionate, and his book will make you think." (Jon Meacham, author of American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House)

This is the second book published by a young reform-minded Islamic scholar Reza Aslan, after his more serious, better articulated one "No god But God" (2006). His latest book seems to me hurriedly written at the request of the publisher who thought the author could say one thing or two on the issues of global terrorism committed in the name of God. I enjoyed the audiobook, but it could have been much better if it had been given more time for more in-depth reflection.

Aslan's analysis and breakdown of the various sorts of Islamic movements was quite helpful. I liked it enough that I bought a hard copy so that I can quote it as needed. I am less certain that he has a solution of how to "win" the war, but his statement that refusing to engage in a Cosmic war is the only valid strategy is one that needs to be heard.
His ability to cite Christian scripture and make it sound ominous (a claim to be "washed in the blood" should not be understood as threatening) needs to be understood, I think, against the backdrop of people reading the Qur'an in equally ominous ways. If you focus on the global pronouncements, this book is simplistic. He does not have any simple solutions that are going to bring peace in the war on terror or in any other war. However, the book can be very helpful in sorting out a range of Muslim attitudes.

Reza Aslan tells a great tale of how contemporary and ancient politics have affected the War on Terror, and how modern politics have affected the people in those countries. He concludes by showing how we can defeat jihad and end the War on Terror. Wonderful book! Highly recommended!

This book offers a comprehensive and probably accurate analysis of the reasons for jihad terrorism. Bravo for his comments on the history of messy American foreign policy in the Middle-East (not to mention the rest of the world). And bravo for his revelations about the inter-sect conflicts rampant in the Muslim world (is the Christian world in much better shape?). The author, however, is quite naive about what might be the answer to overcoming the jihad problem. I certainly don't have the answer, but neither does he.

With good cause, he sings the brown-man-blues about his encounters with American "crusaders" in Cairo and whines about being equally put upon by common Arabs there who spot him (an Iranian raised in the US) as an "other". He further blames violent jihadism on the thought that a second-generation, immigrant, German citizen will never be ethnically "German". Until, many generations hence, when the world's population is boringly homogeneous we might as well accept our built-in distrust of "others". That characteristic evolved in humans too many years ago to expect it to be overcome by a few conversations over tea and a few choruses of "Kumbaya". "Can't we all just get along?"

While not even recognizing how foul his American countrymen see it, Aslan mentions that he knows Iranians in Tehran who will chant "Death to America" in the public square and then secretively beg him for help in getting a US visa. Is it any wonder a lot of Americans perceive the Muslim mind as having a completely different idea of what is factual and what isn't? If "words matter" for Aslan's vacillating hero, President Obama, they also matter for the Muslims of the world.

There is a lot to be learned from this book, but it misses the mark on what a reader could realistically do about settling the world's major dilemma.

This is excellent background for Westerners to understand the history of radical Islam. The authors optimism is somewhat muted now by the development of the Islamic state. Perhaps we can expect another book from this author in the near future explaining where he thinks we are going from here.

Do you know the difference between Islamism and Jihadism? Do you know the differences between what it's like to be Muslim in Europe vs. the United States? I highly recommend this book, especially in the wake of Paris, Brussels, Ankara, Lahore, London, and 9/11.

For those who want to understand: - the social, demographic and cultural specifics that lead to the nuances of the worlds most spread religions- the origins of some of the terms used widely today - jihadism, fundamentalism,...- the difference between fundamentalism (not just Islamic) and Islamism - constructive ideas of countering the "bad-VS-good" mentality spread on both sides of the world - how radical religious social movements differ from established religious institutions

Just when I think I couldn't love Reza Aslan more I find a new book by him. I feel lifted up as a Muslim American knowing that my thoughts and beliefs about democracy Islam and international policy have such clear and powerful voice in brother Aslan. Read everything he writes!